Fantastic Four: The Coming of Galactus, including the preceding arc that introduced the Inhumans. (Note: Galactus was conceived as a one-shot character)

Grant Morrison's JLA (including Earth 2 and the JLA: Classified arcs), JLA 1000000, Seven Soldiers, Batman, Final Crisis/Superman Beyond, Batman and Robin, and Batman, Inc. (Note: the DC reboot was supposed to have happened with Final Crisis, and would have been much different than the reboot we got out of Flashpoint, had then-Publisher Paul Levitz not quashed editorials' plans)

DC's 52 (A case where audience reception and strength of writing managed to supersede editorial mandate/ interference. The weekly schedule helped with this, as well, though editorial managed to get certain things shoe-horned into the end of the series that stand out as such)

Astro City

X-Men: The Phoenix Saga, especially once John Byrne takes over the artistic duties (Note: Claremont originally had Jean survive the end of the Dark Phoenix arc; Marvel's EiC mandated her death)

Geoff John's JSA, Green Lantern, Superman and the Legion of Super-Heroes, and Legion of Three Worlds (although it failed in its goal of actually being a Final Crisis tie-in)

Waid, McCraw, Moy and Imonnen's Legion of Super-Heroes and Legionnaires was just good fun. I hope DC eventually does collected editions of it beyond "The Beginning of Tomorrow"

JLA/Avengers: Kurt Busiek. George Perez. The near entirety of the DC and Marvel heroes united. What more could you want? Seriously, this is how to write a crossover. It's obviously a labor of love for both of the creators and the story is delightfully free of any grossly out of character or just insulting moments (looking at you here Marvel Vs DC). The whole thing also makes for a pretty decent treatise on what the core differences are between the Marvel and DC universes and the strengths of both approaches. It seems impossible that a project like this could please fans but it succeeded in spades.

Superman: Birthright: Mark Waid and Leinil Francis Yu. This is what Man of Steel should have been. It may not be as groundbreaking as Man of Steel but its my favorite long-form Superman origin story. The action is fantastic and it does an excellent job of getting at why Superman matters. The scene where Jimmy lifts Superman's symbol as a flag and leads the charge defying the "Kryptonians" is fantastic. I'm a sucker for those kind of "Superman inspires the people to be heroes" kind of scenes (see also: Dan Turpin standing up to Darkseid on Superman the Animated series; the conclusion of JLA:World War III) and it's a great moment.

Daredevil volume 3: Mark Waid and (mostly) Paolo Rivera's current run on Daredevil is one of the most innovative runs on the character since Frank Miller. While I enjoyed a lot of post-Miller Daredevil, there's just been no escaping the non-stop depression fest that Miller inspired until this relaunch (not a reboot though). While it certainly has its share of tragedy, it is a lot more adventure and humor than you'd normally see. Visually, it is simply amazing with awesome panel layouts and some fantastic visualizations of the world Daredevil experiences. Plus it brings back one of my favorite Daredevil elements, fighting people way outside of his weight class.

"This is all your fault! You shouldn't have taken that cat! You don't teleport into strange metal places and steal pets!"Builds

Oh yeah....Daredevil: Born Again. That storyline is a cultural touchstone for me. It was the one that made me realize that comics could be just as good, if not better, than any movie coming out of Hollywood.

"One must first experience pain in order to be able to appreciate it's absence."

I'm going to avoid Watchmen, Kingdom Come, Sandman, Dark Phoenix Saga and things like that and go with some personal favorites.

Nextwave: Agents of HateSuperman: BirthrightDeadpool: The Good, The Bad and The Ugly. I think it will go down as the definitive Deadpool story.Planetary. The entire run. Amazing.The Secret Six - The one with The Card, I can't remember the name of the arc.Thor God of Thunder - Godbutcher and GodbombWolverine/Gambit: Victims. It's HORRIBLE. It's so 90's it's a MUST read. The Order. About the only good thing to come out of The Civil War.Superior Foes of Spider-Man: Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Silvermane. Makes me laugh out loud almost every issue.Batman: Lovers and Madmen. Alternate take on the origin of The Joker. Creepy fun.Batman: The Court of OwlsX-Men: Messiah CompleX. If you look past some of the gaping plot holes, it's fun as all hell. Saga. The whole freakin' run so far.Amazing Spider-Man: The Gauntlet. Peter has to deal with a run of his old foes, Sandman, Rhino (the best part), The Lizard and Electro leading up to the whole return of Kraven, which kinda sucked. But the build up was great.

Some of the picks are not classics by any stretch, but all of them are fun reads.

Spider-Man: Kraven's Last Hunt. Gosh darnit, to I love this story; generally, DeMatteis misses with me more often than he hits, but he hit this one out of the park. I even wrote a blog entry about how much I love it. It was weird, creepy, poignant, bittersweet, and ultimately inspiring. Just a great, wonderful story.

Geoff John's Flash run up until Identity Crisis. Great stuff, especially the Iron Heights one-shot. After IC, his Flash stuff was not nearly as good, but that run up? Awesome.

Joss Whedon's Astonishing X-Men- First, I love Joss, and this is great. Furthermore, he didn't jettison what Grant Morrison had established in New X-Men, but rather used many of the concepts therein as springboards for his stories. Some of my fellow Whedon fans were more critical, calling it at the time "Buffy Season 8" (little did they know how bad Buffy Season 8 would actually turn out to be!), but I really liked it.

Underworld Unleashed One of my favorite crossovers. It was just a brilliant piece of work by Mark Waid with some incredible villain moments ("When villains want to scare each other, they tell Joker stories.").

Crisis on Infinite Earths- Just incredibly epic in scope, but still include brilliant little emotional touches.

“Anti-Intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that ‘my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge’.”-Isaac Asimov

Avengers: West Coast was the first series I ever tried to collect fully after starting around issue 75 (then getting all the back issues) and I stuck with all the way through the end. As much as that era of Avengers (i.e. Force Works, the Crossing, etc) comics is maligned, I think it turned out some good comics. The Iron Man crossover where the Mandarin turns away from technology is a personal favorite and I think Force Works was superior at capturing the "coworkers that squabble a lot but ultimately have each others back" style of the Avengers than the core Avengers title at the time. It might be tainted by a lot of the issues going on in the 90s but the Tony and Wanda conflict was a way better sub-plot than that Black Knight/Cersei mess that filled the core Avengers. Plus the last issue of AWC was a great bit of defensiveness for those of us who preferred the Wackos over the New York team.

And of course, I own a Century action figure. I shall say no more on the subject >.>

Marvel 2099: On the subject of 90s stuff of questionable taste, I passionately love the 2099 line. I read X-Men 2099 religiously as it was coming out and enjoyed the random issues from the rest of the line but going back and rereading the whole line helped me realize just how solid it could be. There were a few clunkers (Ravage and Judge Dre...I mean Punisher 2099) but it was an excellent line of comics. I highly recommend it for any fans of Cyberpunk/Post-Apocalyptic stories (as the lines often veer between the two styles). I'm glad to see Miguel O'Hara returning to prominence and hope some of the other stuff might come back as well.

"This is all your fault! You shouldn't have taken that cat! You don't teleport into strange metal places and steal pets!"Builds

Extreme Justice is interesting. It started out good, but then it feels like the concept got watered down so it was just "generic super team". Even then, there was some good stuff (WONDER TWINS! AND THEY WERE AWESOME!). The Firestorm drug addict story was irritating, though. Listen, Demon in a Bottle and Speedy on heroin were great stories; if you're going to go to the same well, try to be as great if not better.

Vixen, Return of the Lion: A great character piece all about one of my favourite, yet commonly misused characters, Vixen.

JSA Presents, Star & S.T.R.I.P.E: Another great character piece, that went for two TPB volumes.

“Anti-Intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that ‘my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge’.”-Isaac Asimov

Hmmmmmmm, I would agree with Charlie Huston's run, but nothing after it. It lost its panache when he left the book.

Oh wowser, that's not good.... I'm going to have to revise that statement. I just got the entire trade run & I realised that if you aren't reading them a month apart, but instead back to back, they don't work. The first trade kind of works (since it lays out the ground work), but that second one falls apart completely, which is really disappointing. I just finished the trade & it took the better part of the day as I kept on getting bored... The excitement of arse-kickery at a monthly interval was all that second book had, when you reads it for the story the second trade just kinda looks at ya funny & says "plot? what the hell is that?"

I'm serious, I just finished rereading it & he beats up some random people with no plot importance, kills two cyborgs who taunted him out but who wanted to be killed by him for no specific plot reason (in fact the entire story has no underlying reason for there motivation, or even being cyborgs), plays another half dozen of the go no where "is he crazy or is he an avatar of Konshu" dialogues & then gets an Avengers initiative membership a plot point that is never mentioned again.... Oh & he beats up a guy who beats his wife (no narrative here, the entire thing takes 1 page) & beats up a rapist in the annual at the end.... Very low fruit on the narrative tree there.

Charlie you really let me down on this one. Its kind of like discovering that as much as you liked Indiana Jones, he served no plot purpose in that first movie.

“Anti-Intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that ‘my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge’.”-Isaac Asimov

saint_matthew wrote:Its kind of like discovering that as much as you liked Indiana Jones, he served no plot purpose in that first movie.

I realize this has been going around, and I think that it is really funny, but I always kind of assumed that if Indy wasn't present at the opening of the ark, figuring out how to survive, then another group of Nazis would have checked up on their friends, said "OK mental note: you cannot open this thing," and carried the Ark on to world domination.

Of course this still reduces Indy to a kind of Janitor, merely cleaning up after the Nazis off themselves. But hey, he's a janitor with a cool hat and a whip.